B-Triple proposal a "red herring"

WHILE both sides of state politics lambast each other about whether or not B-triples are safe enough to drive on the Hume Highway, Angus Taylor says the debate is a red herring.

The Liberal candidate for Hume, who has worked on several transport studies in his agribusiness career, has argued the federal government's failure to embrace long-haul rail freight was the real issue.

The recently released NSW Long Term Transport Master Plan has revealed that High Productivity Vehicles (three carriage, 35m trucks) could be trialled on the Hume in early 2014, after completion of the Holbrook Bypass.

The move has sparked fierce criticism from the state opposition about not only safety but what would happen once the vehicles hit Sydney.

Locally, people who commute around the district are concerned about having to pass the mammoth prime-movers, which are more than seven car lengths long.

Both the government and the trucking industry have defended the proposal, saying the B-triples were state of the art vehicles with more safety features than B-doubles and that it would reduce the number of truck movements on the Hume by almost one million over the next 30 years.